The Economic Club of Florida podcast

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Episode 66: Retired Admiral James Stavridis Mar 06, 2026

Show notes

“21st Century Geopolitics and Investments” Retired Admiral James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and Partner & Vice Chairman of the global investment firm Carlyle, shares his insight on today’s world hotspots, including Iran, and potential investment opportunities, before a February 17, 2026 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2026-february-admiral-stavridis)

Admiral Stavridis took the Club on a world tour of potential investment opportunities. His first stop was in the Middle East. He foresees a peace treaty in Gaza implemented by the Palestinian Authority, Israel, the United Nations, President Trump’s Board of Peace, and the Arab League.
“Gaza,” he said, “which has been on fire for two and a half years, I think, is headed toward a period of hopefully prolonged cease fire. That's good news for investors. It means investment in Israel makes more sense. It means investment in general in the region makes more sense. And all of us ought to feel it's a positive humanitarian development that 2.2 million Arabs, Palestinians are going to see some kind of relief in the situation they've been facing.”

The admiral spoke just 11 days before the U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran began on February 28, 2026, but had some things for investors to watch for, in the event of such an attack.

“Number one, if it goes sideways and we end up in an ongoing conflict, the Iranians will respond by closing the Strait of Hormuz. There goes 30% of the world's oil bottled up for months. And they will attack Israel with ballistic missiles, and they'll attack U.S. bases in the region. We will get dragged into this. So you ought to be watching this for the dark end of the spectrum.”

“If this rotten regime tumbles,” he continued, “and I think there's a one in three chance it could, the theocracy could fail. If that happens, Iran could come out from under sanctions, and that's a lot of oil hitting the world markets. So as investors, you ought to be thinking both at the dark end of the spectrum and positive outcomes.”

As for Ukraine, Admiral Stavridis said Vladimir Putin and his ego are the problem. He pointed out that Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe and is full of wheat and corn. Putin’s dream is alignment with China, and he is recruiting mercenaries from all around the world. Cuba is providing troops, and North Korea has more than 30,000 troops fighting in Ukraine. He said investors should be watching for a deal between Russia and Ukraine. Number one, what if... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2026-february-admiral-stavridis)

Episode 65: Lazard Chief Market Strategist Ronald Temple Oct 10, 2025

Show notes

“A Global Macroeconomic and Market Outlook” Ronald Temple, Chief Market Strategist for Lazard’s Financial Advisory and Asset Management businesses, talks inflation, tariffs, and labor supply - and their impact on GDP - together with the latest developments in Europe, China, and Japan, and where the U.S. fits in going forward, before a September 15, 2025 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://www.economic-club.com/2025-ron-temple)

Mr. Temple took the Club on a world tour of geopolitical issues covering the Eurozone, China, Japan, and the United States. He discussed two areas of concern – inflation and tariffs – and focused on three primary themes:

The convergence of GDP growth across developed economies- “US growth rates are likely to slow in the years ahead,” he said. “If we go back in 2023 and 2024, real GDP growth in the United States was 2.8 to 2.9% each year. That's well above what most economists would say is a sustainable growth rate.” He predicted U.S. growth will slow to 1.5%, while sustainable growth is 1.7-2%. He predicted European growth to narrow the gap by increasing to about 1.2%.
Impact of Tariffs on Inflation - “What you're going to see is higher inflation in the United States this year and next because of our trade policies and the tariffs. This is a short-term issue, because tariffs, once you raise the price, you don't get another increase the next year. This would be a one-year inflation divergence.”
The beginning of the end of American exceptionalism in the markets - Mr. Temple said that in the last 15 years, U.S. equities have gone up 10-11% a year, Euro and Japanese stocks up by 2-3%, and emerging markets about 2%. “I think the U.S. will continue to outperform non-U.S. countries, but the gap between us is likely to narrow, and we're likely to see improving economic conditions in some of the non-U.S. countries that are finally being forced to reform their economies and try to improve productivity.”

Mr. Temple pointed out that most U.S. consumer spending is on services – housing, shelter, doctors, financial advisors, lawyers, etc. Only about 24% is on physical goods.

He said that while U.S. job creation is basically at full employment, the year-to-date job creation is the slowest since 2010. This year, there is a significant decline in the number of people who were born in another country, so there are fewer people in the workplace.

“I think for the Federal Reserve there's a real challenge,” he said. “Inflation is still grinding higher as tariffs work their way through to prices. Unemployment has ticked up a little bit, but job growth is much weaker. And if we look at the number of open jobs in the United States per unemployed person, for the first time in years, we're now below 1.0 − meaning there are more unemployed people than open jobs.”

“I think what you're going to see over the next year is the Fed will be cutting rates. But it's not a slam dunk. It's not a clear-cut case that the Fed should be hitting the alarm bells about unemployment, because there's a chance that we will see unemployment at or below four and a half percent by year end, but inflation looking much more worrisome, and it's going to be very hard for economists in the Fed... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://www.economic-club.com/2025-ron-temple) A TeleDirections podcast

Episode 64: Wells Fargo Economist Jackie Benson Aug 11, 2025

Show notes

“U.S. and Florida Economic Outlook” Jackie Benson, vice president and economist with Wells Fargo’s Corporate and Investment Bank, assesses the U.S. and Florida economies for the rest of 2025 into 2026, before a July 17, 2025 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2025-july-jackie-benson)

Ms. Benson began her discussion at the national level and particularly looked at tariffs. She said that the real GDP – the sum of all goods and services produced in the economy domestically – contracted by a half-point in the first quarter of 2025.

“What we saw is businesses rush to get ahead of the incoming tariffs that were to be applied on April 2,” she said. “And that import spike drove down the headline GDP number. Imports are not counted in GDP. So, the act of buying a foreign good in itself is not a drag on the economy, but the act of buying a foreign good instead of a domestically purchased good, does reduce the overall level of economic activity.”

She said that tariff concern also affected consumer spending.

“Consumer spending grew at a very slow pace, only half a percentage point in the first quarter, and that's largely driven by those tariff threats increasing economic concern among consumers and causing them to be a little bit more cautious.”

She told the Club that current policy tariff rates are at 16%, compared to just 3% in 2024. She says the rate changes cause uncertainty.

“Tariffs are a one-time increase in prices,” she said. “It's not an ongoing push in inflation rates, so theoretically, it should be a temporary shock.”

Nevertheless, the economic consensus is that tariffs are a drag on the economy, “although that’s changing a little bit. We've seen it play out in history before. It depends on the magnitude of the tariff rate. It depends on the uncertainty they cause. But generally speaking, any added cost, whether taxes or tariffs, are going to slow economic activity.”

She pointed out that the U.S. economy added 140,000 jobs in June 2025. They were primarily in the fields of government and health care with health care being the larger share. Sectors such as finance, real estate, and technology all lost jobs.

She predicted Federal Reserve interest rate cuts of 25-basis points each in September, October, and November of 2025.

Ms. Benson moved on to Florida and pointed out that the state’s economy is very resilient. It has generally outpaced the nation since 1998. “Florida was only one of a handful of states to post positive GDP growth,” in 2024 into first quarter of 2025 she said, noting the state economy grew at 1.4% in that period compared to a national contraction of 0.5%.

The Florida labor market has grown 1.5% over the past 12-months and the state is adding jobs at a rate almost equal to the pre-pandemic rate.

“Florida has recently seen an acceleration in information technology payrolls,” she said. “Also, in professional and business services, and that includes some technology and professional consulting, scientific research, things like that... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2025-july-jackie-benson)

Episode 63: Florida’s Chief Investment Officer Lamar Taylor Jul 11, 2025

Show notes

“How the SBA is Viewing a Changing World” Lamar Taylor, Chief Investment Officer for the Florida State Board of Administration, discusses the SBA's $275 billion asset management, focusing on asset allocation, assumptions, and potential changes in the economic landscape, before a June 26, 2025 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2025-june-lamar-taylor)

With his slides, Mr. Taylor showed the Club how the Florida pension plan ranks very well against the top ten defined benefit plans in the country. He said he achieves that through asset allocation. Currently about 47% of the fund is in global equities, about 10% in real estate, and the rest in fixed income assets such as treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, and commercial paper.

He reviews asset allocation every three to five years and works to get the most efficient return for the asset mix.

Mr. Taylor said that Covid exposed weaknesses in the supply chain which led to an effort to re-shore and near-shore those supply chains. The changes have required people to spend money. Add in labor expense, energy transition, and an aging population, and those expenses affect equities.

“Equities are about as expensive as they’ve ever been,” he said, “and particularly U.S. equities are expensive.”

The price-to-earnings (P/E) multiples are now about 21-times forward-looking earnings.

He said that it was his opinion that U.S. equities are primarily expensive because of concentration, particularly in:

The Magnificent Seven (principally tech companies in Artificial Intelligence - AI) of the S&P 500 Index
Spending by wealthy U.S. consumers

“A quarter to a third of the growth in U.S. GDP is attributable to capital expenditures in AI,” Mr. Taylor said, as he expressed concern about how large capital expenditures in the past, such as the Dot-Com boom, have not ended well. “Maybe AI is different. Who knows? I don't know. These are huge companies. They can afford it. They have fantastic earnings.”

He said that half of U.S. spending is attributable to the top 10% of income earners. Their spending used to be in the 30-35% range. The top 20% of incomes now own 90% of equity securities, and the top 1% own almost 40% of those securities.
Recently there have been calls for returning manufacturing to the country and reducing our trade deficit. Mr. Taylor said he has begun to look at those changes differently through a concept called identity-of-payments. He said the United States has been the destination for foreign capital for more than 40-years.
“Because we are buying more than we're selling in the goods market, by definition, you’ve got to be importing capital to be able to do that,” he said. “It doesn't mean that trade deficits... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2025-june-lamar-taylor)

Episode 62: Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman Rob Kaplan Feb 06, 2025

Show notes

“2025 Economic Outlook” Rob Kaplan, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, provides a 2025 forecast for the U.S. economy and the financial markets, including the impact of tariffs, before a January 21, 2025 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://www.economic-club.com/2025-january-rob-kaplan)

Mr. Kaplan discussed the economy of the past few years, what he thinks the future might bring, and how Florida is one of the states leading the way.

The past economy has been characterized by several main drivers.

“The economy over the last four years,” he said, “whether we like it or not, has been government spending led. If you go back to 2019, net debt of the U.S. government divided by GDP, was about in the mid-70s. Today we're pushing up near 100% debt to GDP.”

Part of the problem was that COVID happened. The government estimated that the economy would lose $2-trillion, so Congress passed a bill to fill that gap called the Cares Act. Mr. Kaplan said the Federal Reserve printed every dollar of that Act.

Because, during the lockdown, spending went up but services did not, 2020 was the first recession in modern history where GDP went down while consumer spending went up.

“I would argue that if the excess fiscal spending stopped right there, I don't think we would have had the extent of the inflation issues that we've ultimately had,” he said.

However, the Biden administration passed new legislation – the American Rescue Act.

“In 2019, we ran a budget deficit in the United States of around 4% of GDP. In 2020, we ran a budget deficit around 15% of GDP, historically high. What people don't focus on is, in 2021 we ran another monster deficit, around 12% or 13% of GDP. Historic. It was not to fill the COVID gap. The American rescue Act money got spent in 2021, 22, 23, and 24.”

Following that was passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, for another trillion dollars. Kaplan said that fostered a whole range of public-private partnerships all through the United States. About 25% of the money is from the government and 75% private, but he said the projects would not happen without the government money.

He cited, as examples:

More than 20 lithium battery plants being built across the United States, including one in his home state of Kansas.
A New York tunnel project which cost $50-billion and employs 60,000 workers.
Other very large infrastructure projects across the US.

These projects cause disruption in the workforce.

“When you announce a project like that (Kansas battery plant), every restaurant in the state tells me they can't find workers. Every service sector establishment just lost workers because they're going to make $35-$37.50 an hour at the lithium battery plant in DeSoto, Kansas. This is going on all through the country, and it’s not done yet.”

Mr. Kaplan said the Fed probably should have stopped buying bonds in 2021, but waited until mid-2022. The net effect was that inflation got away from the regulators.

That inflation has had drastically different effects on two groups of Americans – each of about 60-70 million people.
The first group, which makes around $55,000 a year or less, has lost purchasing power.

“This loss of purchasing power that we had in 2021, 22, 23, and 24 has meant they can't make ends meet today. So, $55,000 a year may sound like a lot... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://www.economic-club.com/2025-january-rob-kaplan)

Episode 61: Margaritaville Holdings Co-Founder & CEO John Cohlan Dec 11, 2024

Show notes

“Margaritaville: How a Song Became a Brand” John Cohlan, Co-Founder and CEO of Margaritaville Holdings explains the creation and enduring value of singer Jimmy Buffet’s successful multi-billion-dollar brand, before a November 21, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts_and_summaries)

Dr. Jeff Sharkey of The Capitol Alliance Group introduced Mr. Cohlan but first had the club members put their hands on top of their heads in the iconic “Fins Up” salute.

Mr. Cohlan showed a video featuring Jimmy Buffett and people talking about the lifestyle they experienced at his Margaritaville franchise locations. He then explained how Buffett, whose hit songs include the iconic “Margaritaville,” expanded his recording career into what has become that franchise. The beginning was very humble – Buffett began seeing T-shirts sold in Key West with his name spelled wrong.

“It really all began because Jimmy was so annoyed that his name was being spelled wrong, which is pretty crazy,” said Mr. Cohlan. “So Jimmy was an entrepreneurial guy. And there he was in Key West, and he was just getting going, and all of a sudden, he noticed that there were people in Key West selling T- shirts with his name on them with one T instead of two T’s. And he basically said to himself, you know, I should rip myself off, because other people are ripping me off.”

Buffett built a T-shirt shop, then a bar and a restaurant. That’s all that existed in 1997 when Universal Studios in Orlando called and wanted to build a 25,000-square foot Margaritaville restaurant at the entrance to its theme park.

Buffett didn’t want to just license the name, he wanted to build a company and brand, so he called John Cohlan to come down from New York. They did market research and found that the word Margaritaville had a 50-60% recognition.

Mr. Cohlan said people would answer “’Oh, it's a great song. It's that guy, Jimmy Buffett. It's the place I want to be. It's a hammock.’” No one said, ‘Oh, it's that restaurant in Key West.’ So Margaritaville had a product. It had a product and the product was an emotion.”

“And the lesson of a lot of what's happened here is that an emotion can travel to many more places than a product,” Mr. Cohlan added. “The reason we can be the number one coconut shrimp in America, in your Publix store, and also the leading Active Living brand where you want to go and spend the back nine of your life at a Latitude Margaritaville destination is because Margaritaville stands for an emotion, and that emotion is something that is based on the fact that he was such a unique person, and through his music and really the way he lived his life, everyone said ‘I want to live that life.’”

Universal built a model of the proposed restaurant and invited Buffett and Cohlan to look at it. They arrived and met the executives, who were dressed in suits, while Buffett was dressed in shorts.

“Jimmy Buffett is looking at this big, $12 million restaurant model, and everyone's holding their breath, and... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts_and_summaries) A TeleDirections podcast

Episode 60: Assistant Navy Secretary Meredith Berger Nov 08, 2024

Show notes

“The U.S. Navy’s Economic and Strategic Impact from Florida around the Globe” Meredith Berger, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations, and Environment discusses the Navy's priorities in energy, climate resilience, and infrastructure, including hurricane impacts, before an October 10, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)

Assistant Navy Secretary Berger spoke to the Club by a live video stream as Hurricane Milton was just leaving Florida. She pointed out that hurricanes, storms, fires, other forms of bad weather and climate change are something the Department of the Navy has to prepare for all around the world.

“It's a threat that we see that's not bound necessarily by geography, season or time. It happens in other parts of the world, too,” she said. She referenced a typhoon that struck Joint Region Marianas (Guam and the Northern Marianas) last year.

“Ahead of the storm, we protected our critical infrastructure, secured systems, moved our platforms, everything from cars to ships to aircraft, and we sheltered our infrastructure the best we could so we could get the power back on to our community, both inside and outside the fence line. Because that's how a defense community works. We prepared fresh water, charged devices, aggregated supplies, and then you just sit and wait,” she said.

In her role as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations, and Environment, she supports what she called the three “C’s”.

Community – “These are the ecosystems that allow us to survive and thrive, succeed and achieve the economies that support our way of life. It's where our values that we hold and defend reside. It's the institutions you're all a part of, regions, cities, towns. It's where we lead and serve, where our base is and the environment that surrounds them and supports them.”
Critical Infrastructure – “These are ports, natural and man-made structures, roads and runways, barracks and depots, utilities, energy and water that connect us, sustain us, prepare us, and ultimately protect us.”
Climate – “We consider this a war fighting advantage, a tactical and strategic enabler and significantly, a conflict deterrent.”

Ms. Berger also serves as the Navy’s Chief Sustainability Officer. “As we think about climate change and whatever term you want to assign to the impact that we're seeing, so extreme weather, heat, drought, floods, resource scarcity, this is a national security threat for us. It's a threat that we take seriously, and we are on the front lines of it.”
One way of being on the front lines is by investigating the need for buried power cables. She discussed last year’s fires in Maui where above-ground power cables were burned. (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

Episode 59: Guy Harvey Foundation CEO Jessica Harvey Oct 17, 2024

Show notes

“Conservation is Good for Business” Jessica Harvey, CEO of the Guy Harvey Foundation shares its mission and success in combining art and science for greater environmental conservation through ocean research and education before a September 24, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)

Ms. Harvey told the club that her father began his self-taught art career early. His teachers told him he’d never amount to anything if he didn’t pay attention in class and stop drawing Spitfires.

“Part of his success,” she said, “is that the art work is iconic. He started off with the inspiration from The Old Man and the Sea, and because he was a very visual person, he couldn't find an illustrated version of the story, and therefore set upon himself, at the age of 16, to do pen and ink drawings of the story. Took him a year to do, and he, at the time, did not explore the watercolors or the acrylic. That came later.”

Guy Harvey’s paintings of natural scenes now grace everything from museum walls to coffee cups, and part of the money made goes to fund the Guy Harvey Foundation.

“It's very hopeful. It's very uplifting, and because of that, more people want to be associated with the brand. It's branched out into people wanting Guy Harvey F-150s, so we had a licensing agreement with them. Norwegian Cruise Lines wanting to feature dad as the hull art, which they do on all of their ships. And it's not only become a feature of the art, but a billboard for conservation and support. You have things like Tervis, which is a well-regarded brand (of glasses and tumblers), you have TAG Heuer watches that wanted to feature his art on the face of the watch. It goes on to all sorts of different things.”

She said that her father’s art is so realistic because of the efforts he makes to understand the environment.

“He really makes an effort to study the animal and its natural habitat, but also learn more about it to support its conservation. He is not, as he says, he's not a tree hugger. He likes to fish. He likes to eat fish. But there are ways in which we need to move as a society to support sustainable use of our resources, and that's what he's about.”

She pointed out the importance of water to Florida’s economy.

52-million recreational anglers in Florida, $140-billion to the economy
100-million Americans boat annually, $230-billion
Boating and fishing employ thousands of Floridians

The Guy Harvey Foundation began a relationship with Nova Southeastern University in 1999 to do research on pelagic fish – those that live in open waters – including sharks and billfish.

“Dr. Mahmoud Shivji is the director of the Nova Guy Harvey Research Institute based at Nova Southeastern University, and
he's an ecologist, but also geneticist, and he has helped with complicated studies on fish ID, because there's a lot of fish fraud that takes place in the States. Unfortunately, endangered species, his group was one of the first to find to account for the number of shark fins that are caught to support the shark fin trade, which is. Is upwards of 73 million at the time.”
To date, the Foundation has had 176 peer-reviewed scientific papers published which aid conservation efforts. They are supporting... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

Episode 58: Autonomous Trucking Expert Lee White Sep 07, 2024

Show notes

“How Autonomous Trucking Will Deliver the Future” - Nationally-recognized expert Lee White reveals how trials of autonomous vehicle trucking on public highways are progressing and the impact driverless trucks are expected to have on the cost of goods, the labor market, and roadway safety before an August 27, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Mr. White told the Club that autonomous vehicles (AVs) are already on the road. Out west, Waymo operates driverless taxis with more than 100,000 paid rides a week. The company will be expanding to 20 more states.In Florida, trucking will be a huge user of these driverless vehicles. Currently in the state:

130,000 trucking companies operate in Florida
1 in 18 people are employed in the industry
95% of all manufactured tonnage is brought to you by truck
Trucking is the harbinger of the economy

The U.S. trucking industry represents $900-billion worth of transactions in interstate commerce across 140,000 terminals. Plus, we already see autonomous vehicles and machines working in other areas, especially since the COVID pandemic changed the supply chain.
“One of the things that helped these e-commerce companies, the Amazons, the UPS, DHL, Walmart, Target get through that is a lot of automation in their warehouses,” White said. “We have more million square-foot warehouses in our supply chain now than we ever had, and there’s a lot of automation. Amazon has over 14 different robots that are doing things, picking and unloading. We've got automated forklifts that are loading and unloading trucks. There's a lot of automation that's taking place inside the four walls, inside these facilities.”
He also pointed to the ways agriculture uses AVs.
“With John Deere, I believe there's 12 locations that they're testing right now for farming where the tractor has 24-hour capability to be able to farm. All the farmer needs to do is transport their tractor to the field, get it set up, get out of the cab, use their mobile phone and swipe to farm.”
In New York there are autonomous airport shuttles to take you to the terminal and then back to your car. They use autonomous machines as baggage carts and to load and unload cargo.
The military is also interested.
“In the last 10 years, they've had some military vehicles in some of our areas and supply chains that are running without drivers,” White said. “It's going to keep our men and women, our soldiers out of harm's way. You know, if there's a convoy of 20 trucks, there may be truck number 15 that's got a driver in it, and everything else is being autonomously driven.”
The trucking industry is still suffering a recession. There was an additional 4-5% reduction in business last May and June. The industry is also dealing with cost increases.
“If you look at the past three years, the wage cost has gone up from 56 cents per mile for a driver to 78 cents, a 38% increase in wages,” said White, a truck delivery driver earlier in his career... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

Episode 57: WebMD Founding COO Michael Heekin Aug 14, 2024

Show notes

“Development Trajectory of the Internet and AI – Will History Repeat Itself, or Just Rhyme?” WebMD founding COO Michael Heekin draws comparisons to the early days of the Internet to discuss the rapid dynamics of Artificial Intelligence and how it may impact business operations in the next ten years before a July 23, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)

Michael Heekin first took the Club on a nostalgic trip through the history of the internet featuring names such as America Online, the first internet connection many people had, Alta Vista and Yahoo, early search engines, and Netscape, an early browser.

He discussed how electrical energy demands from Artificial Intelligence (AI), various data centers, electric vehicles, among others will be huge. Previous Club speakers have addressed the energy needs as well.

“AI does not think like the human brain,” Heekin said. “Data is the key. It does not have instincts, emotions or consciousness.”

He said that as far as we know, AI is not capable of innovative thinking. He acknowledged that while AI might replace humans in performing some tasks, it’s power will be helping humans work more efficiently.

“It can take the works of the Beatles, and it can compose a new song and have Paul McCartney sing it,” he said. “It sounds like the Beatles because it’s got the same meter and the same interplay of instruments. But, it’s not capable of, and I’m going to guess never will have original thought. It’s not going to recreate a masterpiece like the complete works of Shakespeare or the City of God by Augustine.”

Heekin, who specializes in the management and development of growth-stage health and technology companies, talked about how we saw internet companies succeed and fail, and through the booms and busts, we’ve seen what they needed to succeed. AI companies will be similar in that there will be successes as well as dashed dreams and lost investment money.

“Access to good data and good data curation is what’s going to be really key,” he said. “Getting good data, curating it, and then stuffing it into the algorithm.”

He said that regulatory good faith is necessary for AI to grow, and he praised President Bill Clinton and U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich for their light regulation of the Internet in the 1990s.

“The government needs to not kill this thing in the crib. It has great potential for good, and great, great potential for threats. But that’s the same with a lot of things, wi-fi, life in general. The genie’s out of the bottle. If it’s not AI, it will be something else.”

He also looked at social media and regulation as a model for AI.

“Social media is like giving kids a pack of cigarettes. It’s clear AI is going to need some regulation, but it should be ex-post, not in advance. People in Washington don’t have a monopoly on good sense.”

He said AI will be a commodity product.

“There will be some wrinkles to it, but it will be a commodity. We will have access to AI, but most AI companies will not own the AI algorithms. Thay may own developments of it. They may have prompt engineers that can tell the AI algorithm what to do, but they will not own the algorithm lock stock and barrel.”
The public domain is... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

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